Pope's visit to Poland a further step in reconciliation.

Warsaw--Pope Benedict's first freely chosen visit was to Poland from May 25 to May 28, 2006. The previous trip to World Youth Day in Germany in August 2005 had already been scheduled before he was elected Pontiff. This time the successor to John Paul II, wanted to re-acquaint himself with the places so special to his predecessor. At the same time, he desired to re-affirm the reconciliation between John Paul's nation, Poland, and his own, Germany, with the further benefit of paying homage to the dead of Auschwitz, today the best known icon of the infamies perpetrated in Europe during the Second World War.

In Warsaw, where he celebrated Holy Mass with one million people, he encouraged his audience to remain faithful to the Catholic faith and defend its influence in a secularized Europe. Indeed, the motto of his visit was "Stand firm in your faith."

After visiting the various shrines so dear to his predecessor, on his last day, Sunday, May 28, Benedict visited the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz. This held a special poignancy for the Pope. Having spoken mostly Italian with some Polish during the previous days, Benedict here used some German, his native language, to indicate the special pain of commemorating an evil so great that it leaves one speechless.

Yet this evil was not only an offence of man against man, he said, but first of all an offence against God. Moreover, if reflection and prayers are to have any meaning at all, we should seek "the grace of reconciliation for all those who, at this hour of our history, are suffering in new ways from the power of hatred and the violence which hatred spawns."

"The images beamed around the world," wrote Jan Fisher in the New York Times (May 29) "were striking: the pope in pristine white walking alone under the infamous lie forged in iron, promising freedom through work; two kisses on the cheeks of a Jewish survivor; dark rain that gave way to sun and then, somehow, a rainbow as he finished prayers."

As several commentators have observed, Pope Benedict's address sought a theological understanding of hatred and evil in general, and of the Shoah, the holocaust of the Jews, in particular. Father Raymond de Souza, in his June 1 column in the National Post noted that what Benedict said "is something even his great predecessor, Pope John Paul II, did not say. John Paul said that when man turns against God--as did the totalitarian atheism of Nazi Germany--then he soon turns against his fellow man. Benedict radically extended that analysis, saying that it was precisely hatred for God that led to the attempt to annihilate God's chosen people.".

One other note: once again there were the standard criticisms claiming that Benedict should have said something about "the silence of the Church" or the socalled silence of Pope Pius XII instead of speaking of the silence of God.

These attacks on the Church are part of unbelievers' refusal to recognize their own role in the spread of hatred, blaming instead the one faith which rules out the ways of the "world" as leading anywhere but away from God and, therefore, to disaster.